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still heavier one of Henry VIII, the country learned the same salutary lesson of growth under repression which had benefited Spain and France. Henceforth Englishmen no longer boasted that they belonged to the Yorkist or the Lancastrian faction (§ 300), but began to pride themselves on their loyalty to Crown and country, and on their readiness to draw their swords to defend both. Furthermore, English rule in Ireland was strengthened (§ 159).1

330. Henry's Methods of raising Money; the Court of Star Chamber. Henry's reign was in the interest of the middle classes, -the farmers, tradesmen, and mechanics. His policy was to avoid heavy taxation, to exempt the poor from the burdens of state, and so ingratiate himself with a large body of the people.

In order to accomplish this, he revived " benevolences" (§§ 307, 313), and by a device suggested by his chief minister, Cardinal Morton, and hence known and dreaded as "Morton's Fork," he extorted large sums from the rich and well-to-do.2

The Cardinal's agents made it their business to learn every man's income, and visit him accordingly. If a person lived handsomely, the Cardinal would insist on a correspondingly liberal gift; if, however, a citizen lived very plainly, the King's minister insisted none the less, telling the unfortunate man that by his economy he must surely have accumulated enough to bestow the required "benevolence." "3 Thus on one prong or the other of his terrible “fork” the shrewd Cardinal impaled his writhing victims, and speedily filled the royal treasury as it had never been filled before.*

But Henry VII had other methods for raising money. He sold offices in Church and State, and took bribes for pardoning rebels.

1 This was done by the passage of Poynings's Act (1494) in Ireland. It prohibited the Irish Parliament from passing any law which did not receive the sanction of the English Council. (See note 1, p. 83.) This act was repealed in 1782.

2 Those whose income from land was less than £2, or whose movable property did not exceed £15 (say $150 and $1125 now), were exempt. The lowest rate of assessment for the "benevolences" was fixed at twenty pence on the pound on land, and half that rate on other property.

3 Richard Reed, a London alderman, refused to contribute a "benevolence." He was sent to serve as a soldier in the Scotch wars at his own expense, and the general was ordered to "use him in all things according to sharp military discipline." The effect was such that few after that ventured to deny the King what he asked.

4 Henry is said to have accumulated a fortune of nearly two millions sterling, an amount which would perhaps represent upwards of $90,000,000 now.

When he summoned a Parliament he obtained grants for putting down some real or pretended insurrection, or to defray the expenses of a threatened attack from abroad, and then quietly pocketed the appropriation, a device not altogether unknown to modern gov

ernment officials.

A third and last method for getting funds was invented in Henry's behalf by two lawyers, Empson and Dudley, who were so rapacious and cut so close that they were commonly known as " the King's skin shearers." They went about the country enforcing old and forgotten laws, by which they reaped a rich harvest.

Their chief instrument for gain, however, was a revival of the Statute of Liveries. This law imposed enormous fines on those noblemen who dared to equip their followers in military garb, or designate them by a badge equivalent to it, as had been their custom during the late civil wars (§ 296).

In order to thoroughly enforce the Statute of Liveries, Henry organized the Court of Star Chamber, so called from the starred ceiling where the tribunal met. This court had for its object the punishment of such crimes committed by the great families, or their adherents, as the ordinary law courts could not, or through intimidation dared not, deal with. It had no power to inflict death, but might impose long terms of imprisonment and ruinous fines. It, too, first made use of torture in England to extort confessions of guilt.

Henry seemed to have enforced the Law of Livery against friend and foe alike. Said the King to the Earl of Oxford, as he left his castle, where a large number of retainers in uniform were drawn up to do him honor, "My lord, I thank you for your entertainment, but my attorney must speak to you." The attorney, who was the notorious Empson, brought suit in the Star Chamber against the Earl, who was fined fifteen thousand marks, or something like $750,000, for the incautious display he had made.

331. The Introduction of Artillery strengthens the Power of the King. It was easier for Henry to pursue this arbitrary course because the introduction of artillery had changed the art of war. Throughout the Middle Ages the call of a great baron had, as Macaulay says, been sufficient to raise a formidable revolt. Countrymen and followers took down their tough yew long bows from

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the chimney corner, knights buckled on their steel armor, mounted their horses, and in a few days an army threatened the holder of the throne, who had no troops save those furnished by loyal subjects.

But since then, men had "digged villainous saltpeter out of the bowels of the harmless earth" to manufacture powder, and others had invented cannon (§ 239), " those devilish iron engines," as the poet Spenser called them, "ordained to kill." Without artillery, the old feudal army, with its bows, swords, and battle-axes, could do little against a king like Henry, who had it. For this reason the whole kingdom lay at his mercy; and though the nobles and the rich might groan, they saw that it was useless to fight.

332. The Pretenders Symnel and Warbeck. During Henry's reign, two pretenders laid claim to the crown: Lambert Symnel, who represented himself to be Edward Plantagenet, nephew of the late King; and Perkin Warbeck, who asserted that he was Richard, Duke of York (§ 310), who had been murdered in the Tower by his uncle, Richard III. Symnel's attempt was easily suppressed, and he commuted his claim to the crown for the position of scullion in the King's kitchen.

Warbeck kept the kingdom in a turmoil for more than five years, during which time one hundred and fifty of his adherents were executed, and their bodies exposed on gibbets along the south coast of England to deter their master's French supporters from landing. At length Warbeck was captured, imprisoned, and finally hanged at Tyburn.

333. Henry's Politic Marriages. Henry accomplished more by the marriages of his children and by diplomacy than other monarchs had by their wars. He gave his daughter Margaret to King James IV of Scotland, and thus prepared the way for the union of the two kingdoms in 1603. He married his eldest son, Prince Arthur, to Catharine of Aragon, daughter of the King of Spain, by which he secured a very large marriage portion for the Prince, and, what was of equal importance, the alliance of Spain against France.

Arthur died soon afterward, and the King got a dispensation from the Pope, granting him permission to marry his younger son Henry to Arthur's widow. It was this Prince who eventually

became King of England, with the title of Henry VIII, and we shall hereafter see that this marriage was destined by its results to change the whole course of the country's history.

334. The World as known at Henry's Accession (1485). The King also took some small part in certain other events, which seemed to him, at the time, of less consequence than these matrimonial alliances. But history has regarded them in a different light from that in which the cunning and cautious monarch considered them.

A glance at the map (opposite) will show how different our world is from that with which the English were acquainted when Henry was crowned. Then the earth was generally supposed to be a flat body surrounded by the ocean. The only countries of which anything was certainly known, with the exception of Europe, were parts of western Asia, together with a narrow strip of the northern, eastern, and western coasts of Africa. The knowledge which had once existed of India, China, and Japan appears to have died out in great measure with the travelers and merchants of earlier times who had brought it. The land farthest west of which anything was then known was Iceland.

335. First Voyages of Exploration; the Cabots, 1497. About the time of Henry's accession a new spirit of exploration sprang up. The Portuguese had coasted along the western shores of Africa as far as the Gulf of Guinea, and had established trading posts there. Later, they reached and doubled the Cape of Good Hope (1487). Stimulated by what they had done, Columbus, who believed the earth to be round, determined to sail westward in the hope of reaching the Indies. In 1492 he made his first voyage, and discovered a number of the West India Islands.

Five years afterward John Cabot, a Venetian residing in Bristol, England, with his son Sebastian, persuaded the King to aid them in a similar undertaking. They sailed from that port. On a map drawn by the father after his return we read the following lines: "In the year of our Lord 1497, John Cabot and his son Sebastian discovered that country which no one before his time had ventured to approach, on the 24th June, about 5 o'clock in the morning." That entry is supposed to record the discovery of Cape Breton

THE WORLD SHORTLY AFTER THE ACCESSION OF HENRY VII

Light arrows show voyages southward made up to 1492. Light track, Da Gama's voyage, 1497. Dark arrows, voyages of Columbus and Cabot. White crosses, countries of which something was known before 1492. White area, including western coast of Africa, the world as known shortly after Henry VII's accession